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The Home Office and the Asbestos Industry Regulations, 1931 Medical History, 1998, 42: 421-438 Too little, too late? The Home Office and the Asbestos Industry Regulations, 1931 PETER BARTRIP* Asbestos is the generic term for a group of fibrous minerals. Virtually indestructible and of high tensile strength, it is both fire and acid resistant, and yet can be spun into yarn and woven into cloth. Although there is evidence of the use of asbestos in the ancient world, it acquired commercial importance only in the late nineteenth century. Thereafter it was employed for numerous purposes, including in fire proofing, insulation and the automobile industry. But, while asbestos was in many ways a boon to humanity, it possesses one major drawback: exposure to its dust can cause fatal diseases, including fibrosis of the lungs (asbestosis) and cancer. As awareness of these dangers emerged, its use came to be first regulated and, subsequently, curtailed, so that today an asbestos industry hardly exists. While the asbestos industry might be virtually extinct, no branch of the history of occupational health has received more attention than asbestos-related disease. Much of this attention has focused on the USA, but several studies have discussed British developments, particularly during the first third of the twentieth century.1 When scholars independently investigate almost any subject, the usual outcome is debate and controversy. However, in relation to asbestos and health there is a high degree of consensus, not only that asbestos was "a bad thing" but that a chapter of errors and omissions occurred in the discovery and eradication of that bad thing. As far as early-twentieth-century Britain is concerned there is broad agreement on a number of points. First, that regulation arrived "late", that is long after the hazards were understood. Second, that certain groups and individuals, including manufacturers, medical scientists, and Factory Inspectors, deserve censure for the belated introduction of regulations. Third, that the regulations were the product of more or less "cosy" negotiations between asbestos manufacturers and civil servants which took little account of trade union views. The purpose of this article is to appraise these assessments, to question the prevailing consensus, and to argue that hitherto studies of the early history of asbestos and occupational health have been dominated by that most beguiling, though misleading, of distractions: hindsight. * Peter Bartrip, PhD, Nene University College 252-75; Morris Greenberg, 'Knowledge of the health Northampton, Park Campus, Boughton Green Road, hazard of asbestos prior to the Merewether and Price Kingsthorpe, Northampton, NN2 7AL. report of 1930', Soc. Hist. Med., 1994, 7: 493-516; David J Jeremy, 'Corporate responses to the See in particular Nick Wikeley, 'The Asbestos emergent recognition of a health hazard in the UK Regulations 1931: a licence to kill', J Law Soc., asbestos industry: the case of Turner & Newall, 1992, 19: 365-78; N J Wikeley, Compensation for 1920-1960', Bus. econ. Hist., 1995, 24: 254-65; industrial disease, Aldershot, Dartmouth, 1993; Nick Geoffrey Tweedale and Philip Hansen, 'Protecting Wikeley, 'Turner & Newall: early organizational the workers: the Medical Board and the asbestos responses to litigation risk', J Law Soc., 1997, 24: industry, 1930s-1960s', Med. Hist., this issue. 421 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.93, on 30 Sep 2021 at 06:35:59, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300064334 Peter Bartrip It is not easy to establish when it became clear that exposure to asbestos dust posed a health hazard. The conventional view is that the threat was not recognized until the mid to late 1920s. More recently, however, Morris Greenberg, Barry Castleman and others have shown that an asbestos hazard had been identified even before the end of the nineteenth century. Greenberg in particular has gone on to question why it took so many years for the first regulations to be introduced, implying that the Factory Inspectorate was either lax or negligent in permitting an excessive time lag to occur.2 But while there are isolated references to the dangers of asbestos from the late 1890s, there was no compelling medical or scientific evidence against asbestos and no sustained call for regulation until the late twenties. By cobbling together various references it is possible to suggest that the hazards of asbestos were fully appreciated by the government in the early 1900s.3 But any such suggestion is misleading and rests heavily, as Robert Murray has argued, upon the use of hindsight.4 A sentence in the Senior Medical Inspector's 1927 report provides a different perspective on the issue of government knowledge. "The effect of inhaling the many kinds of dust produced in industry is", John Bridge wrote, "as yet imperfectly understood."'5 Hence it is hard to dispute the views, expressed in 1930 by another Medical Inspector of Factories, Edward Merewether, as to why asbestosis had "only recently attracted notice and become a problem in the industry".6 These were that: 1. Significant commercial exploitation of asbestos was relatively new.7 2. The asbestos industry was small and employed comparatively few workers, particularly in dusty processes.8 3. The disease developed slowly and unobtrusively. 4. The disease was easily confused with tuberculosis. 5. Affected workers left the industry and therefore fell out of sight of Factory Inspectors. 6. Medical research on the effects of dust inhalation had concentrated on dusts containing free silica.9 To this list might be added a point made by Bridge in his 1928 report, namely, that previous "instructions by Inspectors to press for enclosure of, or the application of exhaust ventilation to, dusty processes in the industry, must have checked the earlier incidence by materially reducing the concentration of dust".'0 2 Greenberg, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 8 The 1921 census indicated that the industry 493-516. employed 3762 persons. By 1931 the number had 3 Guardian, 6 Aug. 1982. risen to 4286. See Census ofEngland and Wales, 4 R Murray, 'Asbestos: a chronology of its 1921. Industry tables, London, HMSO, 1924, table 1, origins and health effects', Br. J. ind. Med., 1990, p. 7; Census ofEngland and Wales, 1931. Industry 47: 361-5. tables, London, HMSO, 1934, table 1, p. 4. In the 5 PP 1928 ix, Annual report of the Chief period 1920-1930 inclusive, the annual average Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1927, p. 490; quantity of raw and fibre asbestos imported into the see introductory comments to the 1928 report, UK for domestic consumption was 19,281 tons. See PP 1929-30 xiii, p. 540. Annual statement ofthe trade ofthe United Kingdom 6 E R A Merewether and C W Price, Report on withforeign countries and British possessions, effects ofasbestos dust on the lungs and dust London, HMSO, 1925-1932. suppression in the asbestos industry, London, 9 Merewether and Price, op. cit., note 6 above, HMSO, 1930, p. 17. p. 17. 7 PP 1929-30 xiii, Annual report of the Chief 10 PP 1929-30 xiii, Annual report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1928, p. 560. Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1928, p. 560. 422 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.93, on 30 Sep 2021 at 06:35:59, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300064334 The Home Office and the Asbestos Industry Regulations, 1931 Before the 1920s In Britain the first reference to the health hazards of asbestos dates from the 1898 annual report of the Lady Inspectors of Factories. In this the Chief Lady Inspector, Adelaide Anderson, included a section on "certain dusty occupations". Castleman implies that she singled out "asbestos manufacturing processes" for "special attention" because they were particularly dangerous." In reality, asbestos was only one of four "dusty occupations which specially came under observation in 1898 ... on account of their easily demonstrated danger to the health of workers, and because of ascertained cases of injury to bronchial tubes and lungs medically attributed to the employment of the sufferers".12 As regards asbestos, Anderson noted that: In the case of one particular asbestos works, which I visited with Miss Deane [another inspector], far from any precaution having been taken, the work (sifting, mixing, and carding) appeared to be carried on with the least possible attempt to subdue the dust; hand labour being used where mechanical connivance was possible to obviate it, and no sort of ventilation being applied.13 Deane herself noted that: The evil effects of asbestos dust have also attracted my attention, a microscopic examination of this mineral dust which was made by H.M. Medical Inspector [Dr Thomas Legge] clearly revealed the sharp, glass-like, jagged nature of the particles, and where they are allowed to rise and to remain suspended in the air of a room, in any quantity, the effects have been found to be injurious, as might have been expected. 14 Further brief references to asbestos occurred in Anderson's 1899, 1901, 1906, and 1911 reports. In two of these Anderson referred to the preventive measures being introduced by asbestos companies; thus, in 1906 she mentioned an "excellent system of exhaust ventilation" at "one very large asbestos works in the textile district of Lancashire".15 In 1910 one of the Medical Inspectors of Factories, Edgar Collis, commented on the subject.16 In 1917 the Factory Inspectorate conducted an inquiry into the asbestos hazard but found that "no further evidence incriminating asbestos had come to light either at home or abroad, and therefore no further action could be taken".17 These references show that the Factory Inspectorate, including its medical branch, was aware of the potential health hazards of asbestos dust from an early date.
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